A snobbish-appearing individual accosted a countryman in homespun with the
following interrogation:--
"I say, ah, my fraand, are you sufficiently conversant with the topography
of _this_ neighborhood to direct me to the nearest disciple of Æsculapius,
eh?"
"What?" exclaimed the astonished rustic.
"Can you familiarize me with the most direct course to a physician?"
"Hey?"
"Can you tell me where a doctor lives?"
"O, a doctor's house. Why didn't you say so before?"
* * * * *
The next is after the same sort.
A sailor chap entered a dentist's office to have a tooth extracted.
[Illustration: "LOWER TIER, LARBOARD SIDE."]
_Doctor (with great professional dignity, speaking very slowly)._ "Well,
mariner, what tooth do you require extracted? Is it an incisor, bicuspid,
or a molar?"
_Jack (brusque and loud)._ "It's here in the lower tier, larboard side.
Bear a hand, lively, you dumb'd swab, for it's nippin' my jaw like a
lobster."
* * * * *
_The most astonished boy_ I ever beheld was a little country lad who came
to have a tooth drawn. "He thought it must be fun," his mother said; "but
he never had one drawn, and knows nothing of it."
"O!" with a great, round mouth, was all he had time to say, but the
expression of astonishment depicted on that striking countenance, glaring
eyes, and by the expressive, spasmodic "O!" I never can forget or
describe; and he caught his hat and ran home, a distance of two miles,
without stopping, while his mother followed in the carriage by which they
came. The boy's idea was summed up as follows:--
"The doctor hitched tight onto the tooth with his pinchers, then he pulled
his first best, and just before it killed me, the tooth came out, and so I
run home."
* * * * *
"_Taking it out in trade_" is all very well when the arrangement is
mutual; but there are occasions when the advantages are imperceptible, at
least to one party, as thus:--
"What's the matter, Jerry?" asked old Mr. ----, as Jeremiah was jogging
by, growling most furiously.
"Matter 'nough," replied old Jerry. "There I've been luggin' water all the
morning for the doctor's wife to wash with, and what do you s'pose she
give me for it?"
"About ninepence."
"Ninepence? No! She told me the doctor would pull a tooth for me some
time, when he got leisure."
* * * * *
Apothecaries sometimes "come down" from the dignity of the professional
man, and crack a joke. For instance,--
A humorous druggist on Washington Street recently exposed some cakes of
soap in his window with the pertinent inscription, "Cheaper than dirt."
In the country, you know, they keep almost everything in the apothecaries'
shops. We mentioned the fact in our chapter on Apothecaries. A wag once
entered one of these apotheco-groco-dry-goods-meat-and-fish-market-stores,
and asked the keeper,--
"Do you keep matches, sir?"
"O, yes, all kinds," was the reply.
"Well, I'll take a trotting match," said the wag.